


Mae’s Fun Road Trip to Bright Harbor

by egoat



Category: Night In The Woods (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Loss, M/M, Night in the Woods - Freeform, Other, gregg rulz ok!!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-24 05:09:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10734777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/egoat/pseuds/egoat
Summary: Mae visits Bright Harbor, re-connecting with her old friend Gregg. The two talk and relate their recent experiences.





	1. Part 1

“Maybe

You'll think of me, when you are all alone”

\- “Maybe”, The Ink Spots

 

Part One

Greggory Lee was sprawled out on his bed. Entirely exhausted, he seemed to only want to lay down and breath for a minute.  He was lost in a sort of half-sleep for a while, barely even conscious.

He had just come back from work, and had proceeded to take off his clothes, soaked in sweat from the combined power of the Bright Harbor summer, an hour of doing inventory, and a congested bus ride home, and changed into a clean white tee shirt and shorts. He felt too tired to even get in the shower. Just laying like this felt right.

He pulled out his phone to check the time, which was around six PM. It should have been starting to cool off by now. It wasn’t. He texted Angus,

"when do u get off again????".

He paused for a second.

"lol @ get off ^^%"

He closed his eyes.

"i'm so BORED".

"should i have another job?".

"or just like".

"do crimes".

"lol".

"but like for real hahaha.".

"never realized before that like".

"everyone should totally be doing crimes for money".

"it's SUPER EASY and makes so much sense, now".

He waited.

"please fuck me".

Gregg propped himself up. He knew, actually, that Angus would be working until 11, or probably past that. He had to wake up at 5am tomorrow to get to work in time for his next shift. He groaned, and coughed.

Their ancient, tiny hovel of an apartment was mostly this bedroom, where they had spent nearly all of their time together since moving. Their even tinier kitchen featured a gas oven, a sink, a dishwasher, a tiny little table and two IKEA chairs–it was directly adjacent to the entrance, in what they had been told was an "innovatively open floor plan".

They also had a cesspool of a bathroom, overloaded with tissues and toilet paper and aspirin bottles. Gregg’s guitar and the rest of their old band equipment were stuffed in the hall closet which crowded the door. He wondered if they even had room to pull them out and set them up. 

Strewn around the bedroom, and the whole place, as there weren’t really doors or enough space to cleanly define borders, were dirty clothes, Gregg’s great-great-grandfather’s pickelhaube, a survival knife, a camera, Gregg's laptop, a disassembled telescope, and dirty dishes. Gregg's bike leaned uncomfortably on a wall by the doorway, rarely used. He found the actually working public transit system of Bright Harbor revolutionary.

While this was a charming aesthetic to keep up for the first few weeks, the place was simply getting hard to navigate and someone was going to have to give in and clean eventually. Gregg considered it, for a moment, and rolled over on the bed instead.

Angus' computer desk was a luxurious, tidy masterwork compared to the rest of the place. It sat oddly in the far corner of the room, too close to the door. Gregg knew how dearly Angus worked to put that together and maintain it. Whenever he accidentally got food on the keyboard, Angus immediately cleaned it, and though he never reprimanded him, he could sense Angus' cold disappointment for days.

He was thinking, vaguely, about watching something on said computer, when his phone dinged.

Angus had replied, "You're adorable. Be home soon, bug <3".

Gregg wrote back, "<3 <3 <3 fuck you".

There was a knock at the door, and Gregg's mind set on fire.

Who the fuck could that be? Best case scenario, it was one of their neighbors, or something. Gregg didn’t really recall ever introducing themselves to any of them. Was that rude? Maybe one of them was here to bridge the gap of his rudeness. Worst case scenario, it was someone with a gun.

Gregg yelled out, "Coming!". He frantically looked around. He eyed one of his knives, picked it up, held it behind his back, composed himself, and walked over to the door. With bated breath, he undid the padlocks and opened it.

"Mae?"

There she was, in almost exactly the state Gregg had seen her in last year, when she had first come back from college, back in Possum Springs. Scraggly, unwashed, with a perfectly blank look in her red eyes and a pathetic, dopy smile on her face. The same dumb sweater with its void symbol that she made in home ec class.

Without saying a word, she hugged him. Gregg hugged her back.

"Hey bud!!!!!"

She squeezed him. "Hi Gregg!!!!" she whispered, faintly, in his ear. Her voice sounded hoarse and damaged.

"What are you, uh, doing here?? What's going on?"

Mae broke the hug, and backed away. "I just wanted to, y'know, stop by, and say hi, like we talked about?"

He was confused. He quietly slipped out a question, with no harmful intention at all, almost completely on accident, barely even a thought,

"Like we talked about?"

He could tell from Mae's face how terribly hurt she was hearing this. It was as if her eyes were zooming out, boring into herself. Gregg acted quickly,

"No, yeah, I mean, of course!!! Come in, please!!!!"

The situation, now only slightly assuaged, proceeded into the apartment.

"Hey," Mae said, as she trotted slowly in behind him, "are you gonna kill me?"

Gregg stopped in his tracks, and realized he had been, and still was, gripping his survival knife tightly in his hand. He had probably accidentally bristled it against her fur while they were hugging.

"Oh, oops, sorry!!! Just a precaution, you know, me and Angus don't know many people out here, so."

"Shucks," Mae said, "I was kind of hoping you were offing me."

"Haha, yeah, right? If that crazy well-cult paid me enough probably."

"Or, like, the government, because we totally did kill all those people."

"Yeah, it was kind of wild."

There was a comfortable silence.

Gregg offered, "If I was going to kill you, I'd totally be more creative about it, and like,"

Mae interrupted, "Tie me to some railroad tracks and cackle as you wait for a train to come by?"

"Or like, put you on the top of a wooden tower and set it on fire, which is what I was going to say." 

Gregg's phone dinged - he didn't look, but was reasonably sure it was Angus.

"So," he asked, "are you okay and everything? How are things going?"

He could tell the question sent Mae for something of a loop, but she answered, "Yeah, I'm good. Things are good. Especially compared to how they used to be. I'm doing good, and I'm looking at jobs in town, and stuff."

"That's cool." Gregg noticed that Mae looked honestly pleased. He took it as a good thing, although it was always kind of hard to tell. "I'm glad you're here," he offered.

"Me too. Hey, is Angus here?"

"No, he's working. Doing a night shift at this place downtown called You Want a Pizza Me.”

Mae was silent.

“It’s a pizza place.”

“I know. I got that.”

“It’s pretty funny, right?”

“Oh my god.”

“Anyway, it’s pretty hard work. Living here has kind of been…” Gregg sighed.

“Rough?” Mae perked up.

“No, I mean, it’s good. It’s hard, but it’s good. We’re both working, but that’s how life is, you know? Our schedules don’t always overlap perfectly, and stuff, but it happens. ”

Mae sort of nodded, and looked around the place aimlessly.

“But when your schedules do overlap,” she ventured, “it’s just like–”

“Nonstop fuckin'," he interrupted.

Mae snorted, and was made immediately uncomfortable. She continued to survey the apartment, a mess of laundry and dishes and detritus, and observed half-heartedly, "This place is kind of crazy."

"Yeah, right? I don't know why, but it's nowhere near as clean as the other place. I mean, I guess Angus cleans less, is the reason, because I never cleaned at all. Haha."

Mae looked at her boots, and kicked at the floor.

Gregg didn't really know what to do in situations like this. Or whatever this situation was. He wasn't really sure it was a ‘situation’ at all, or, any kind of regular one, at least. 

"Mae, is everything, like, okay with you?" he offered.

"No, no, yeah. I'm good."

"You could have like, sent me some texts or something ahead of time. We could have taken you around the city and–hey, do you want to crash here, actually?"

Mae checked her phone for the time, as if it dramatically affected matters. It was 6:13. She started to mumble, "I don't want to put you guys out I just wanted to check–"

"NO!!!!! You're staying here, nerd!!!!!"

"Fine!!!!"

Gregg, suddenly, hugged her, very awkwardly, squeezing her from the side like he was attempting to deflate through sheer force one of those balloon-men that blow around in front of car dealerships. He felt a little weird about the gesture almost immediately, but like it was probably called for. 

Mae didn't seem to respond at all, which made him feel a little weirder about it.

"Mae, are you..."

Tears had started slowly rolling down her face.

"Oh, hey–"

She leaned into his shoulder and cried. She was completely broken up, as if something had shattered insider her.

"Mae, hey, it's okay,” Gregg tried.

They stayed like that for a minute. Gregg wasn't quite sure what to do. He tried petting her head, which felt weird, so he stopped.

"What's wrong?" he tried.

"I just–I'm just–"

She cried more, weeping into his shoulder.

“Hey, Mae, maybe you should lie down, or something, alright?”

Mae, without a word, broke off and hurried, nervously, frantically, further into the apartment. She realized, unfortunately, there was no easy solution to this problem, and also no real place to lie down, besides Angus’ and Gregg’s bed, which would be kind of weird. She stood there, out of place, snotty and crying, and felt so deeply, deeply foolish.

“I shouldn’t have come here, I don’t know,” she murmured out.

“Dude, what? You’re always welcome here. Come on,” Gregg approached her.

She laughed, somewhat hysterically. Gregg tried to keep smiling at her. She smiled back, now nervously devoid of any idea of what she was feeling or doing. Her eyes darted around the room, still stuck to the floor.

Gregg was trying to piece together what had gone wrong. When he and Angus left, things weren’t that much better for Mae, in terms of her having a plan or a job or any idea of a future or her general mood, but still, she seemed to have gained some kind of composure over the past year. Some kind of stability.

After they left, she had stopped texting him or talking to him after a while. There was a period where she had texted him nonstop, and all of a sudden that sort of abruptly trickled off. He felt bad about it, but not really sure what to do about it, either.

Looking at her now, it didn’t seem to be there. She had seemed so resolute, or at least sort of resolute? It seemed as though she had the chance of a start, or a new beginning. Her and Beatrice were sort of getting along pretty well again, he thought, and maybe even more than they ever got along.

Or, as the thought occurred, had something worse happened? Something like what happened with Casey? He hated himself for even thinking this, but he also couldn’t not be sure. Mae could be in trouble. Someone could be hurt. He needed to know–

“Gregg.”

“Mae?”

“I’m sorry.” She seemed to have stopped crying, entirely.

“It’s okay. What, uh, happened? I mean, did something happen? Sorry.”

Mae was silent.

“Mae, I’m sorry, I’m just worried–“

“It’s fine. Nothing happened!!!” Her eyes flared up, though her voice remained calm.

“Oh,” Gregg sort of felt like he had been an ass, yet also like he hadn’t really said anything at all, and tried, “It’s just, you sort of seem distraught.”

She smiled a little bit, before getting serious again. “It was just…”

“You can talk to me!!!”

“That’s what I’m doing!!!”

“Haha, yeah. Do you want to sit down or something?”

“Oh, uh, I guess.” 

Mae looked over to the bedroom, and the bed. Gregg pointed to the kitchen table. Mae gratefully obliged, and looked embarrassed by her confusion. 

As she pulled out a chair, and sat down, Gregg began pulling off the layers of old plates and cups scattered on that table and moving them over to the kitchen counter. Mae didn’t know what to say as this happened.

“Okay,” Gregg started, “tell me what’s up,” and sat down.

“Well, I guess,” she began, “it sort of all started when my mom started talking to me about college again and I guess my parents had decided that it would maybe be best for me to finish college since I didn’t seem to know what I was doing in the meantime and it should be easy for me to finish college, relatively anyway, and it would be better than doing nothing and I should probably be able to do it and then I started talking to Beatrice about it and– can I have some water?”

“Oh, uh, yeah.” Gregg got up, slid the chair against the floor, and walked over to the kitchen. He awkwardly searched around for the cleanest glass they had, and filled it up with tap. He walked back, and put it down on the table in front of Mae. She began lapping at it almost immediately. “Do you also want some tissues, maybe?” he asked.

“No, I’m okay.”

Gregg went to the bathroom, and got tissues. He put them down on the table.

“Okay, you can keep going.”

“Huh?”

“With what happened, Mae!!!”

“Oh, yeah, so then Beatrice was kind of telling me about this, this other thing that we, that I could do it with her, and then I was thinking about that.”

“Wait, what thing?”

“I was thinking about helping her out with the store and maybe we could also move in together.” Mae lapped at her water.

Gregg paused. “What?”

“And, we had all these plans, and stuff, and she seemed really happy.” Mae’s stare had taken on a frantic quality–her gaze seemed frozen ahead of her. She was totally paralyzed.

“Mae, slow down. You and Bea were gonna move in together?”

“Yeah.”

“Like, as friends?”

“No.”

“Oh. Oh my god, Mae! How have you not told me about this? How haven’t you told either of us about this? Angus was always–“

Mae’s stare had broken. She, all of a sudden, looked down. “It– it ended.”

“Oh.”

She was crying again, completely silently. It was like she had frozen herself.

Gregg pulled out a tissue and offered it to her. She took it, and blew her nose into it. Gregg’s phone dinged. This time, because it was completely silent, Mae noticed.

“Is that Angus?”

Gregg pulled his phone out.

The first one, sent twelve minutes ago, read, “This jackal came in and wanted chili fries. He was very high, and we had to spend like ten minutes telling him this was a pizza place.”

The second one, just now, read, “This is really gross because I’m at work but I honestly can’t stop thinking about the way you–“

He decided to read that later. He quickly wrote back, “mae is here-she’s upset smth happened with her & bea or smth. i think she will crash here. did u kno about them? get home quik!!!” He sent it.

“Yeah, it was Angus," he told Mae, "Don’t worry about it.”

Mae was looking down again. She was wiping her face with the tissue. Now she was licking her paw, and cleaning her face. Gregg found this troubling.

“So, uh, you and Bea dated, huh? Or, yeah, I guess. Sorry, though, that it ended, but, why didn’t you tell anyone? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Um, I don’t know. I guess I was afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“I don’t know.” She batted at her face with the tissue some more. It was sort of gross.

Gregg didn’t know what to say, for a moment. He tried, “What happened?”

“She was,” Mae’s voice had gotten down to a whisper now from the crying. She hoarsely broke out little fragments of thoughts, “I don’t know. She was– she just got–”

“Mae, what happened?”

“She was just mean.”

Mae got another tissue, blew her nose, and continued, “It was like, there were some days she was so sweet and nice, and, like no one I had ever seen before. She was glowing. It was like being around her was being in a different world, or in another place, or something. It was like, I mattered so much to her, and she never let me forget that.”

Tears ran down her face. She put the tissue down, and kept going. Her intense stare had come back. She was totally focused, or totally un-focused. Gregg couldn’t tell.

“When we started dating, it was like everything I knew about her was changing, but still staying the same, in just the strangest way. She was so happy. Maybe it’s wrong to believe that, or maybe I was just seeing what I wanted to see, but she seemed so happy, you know?”

“It was like she was the person I had always known she was, before everything happened, with her mom, and then her dad, and all of that. Nothing else mattered, you know?”

Gregg nodded. “I know,” he said.

“She was my Beabea again,” Mae said.

“But with sex,” Gregg half-asked.

“Yeah. Is that weird?”

“No, I think it’s normal, actually," Gregg nodded.

“Okay.” Mae picked up her glass of water again and drank it all. Without a word, Gregg picked it up and went to get her more.

“So, what happened?” he asked. He turned the tap on.

“When I started talking about maybe going to college again, things started to go wrong, I think. I don’t know how, but I think she thought that I didn’t care about leaving her. I didn’t want to leave her, Gregg. I still don’t. I wish–I don’t know why I made her think…”

Gregg put the water down on the table, and sat down again. She drank.

“You know she’s wanted to go to college for a while, too,” he offered.

“I know, Gregg.”

“Maybe when you told her that–“

Gregg’s phone, which he had left on the table, dinged. It was a text from Angus. It read, “OMG WTF”.

Mae asked, “Is that Angus again?”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it, he has a pizza thing. A pizza problem.”

“Don’t we all????”

“Haha, yeah.”

His phone dinged again.

Angus had written, “You’re going to be mad at me, but Bea kind of told me some of this already.”

Again. “I get off at 11. Tell Mae it’s cool that she can sleep here. Also, tell her I love her and she’ll be okay.”

Gregg picked up the phone, furious.

“Are you guys talking about me?” Mae asked. She was lapping at her water again.

Gregg froze. “Uhhhhhh.”

“Are you?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s okay, I guess.”

“Good.” He started texting, “W T F how te fuck am i the las one to kno about this what the whole fuck i’m her best friend omg. also where the fuck is she gonna sleep. do you wanna be on the floor bc it sounds like it”.

“Is the pizza there good?” Mae asked. She seemed to have completely forgotten that she was soaked in tears.

“Huh?”

“At Angus’ work?”

“Yeah.”

“Do they like let him take home free food?”

“Not really, but he usually does anyway.”

“Can we have pizza???”

“Yeah. He doesn’t get home for like, five hours, though. So. It’ll be a while.”

“That’s okay.” She was beaming.

There was a pleasant refrain.

Gregg softly suggested, “We don’t have to keep talking about you and Bea if you don’t want.”

“I want to,” Mae said, her gaze returning.

"Okay," Gregg said, "but I need to pee."

 


	2. Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mae remembers.

Part Two

For Mae Borowski, remembering happened all the time. It was the very easiest and the very hardest thing to do. It wouldn't take her any amount of time to think of something bad she'd done, some way she'd embarrassed herself, some way she hurt someone, on accident or not. Her mind was a shitty VCR, and it only played the same few shitty tapes everytime, over and over, catching on every detail, hitching and rewinding and playing those same memories everytime, each worse than the last, somehow even worse than you remembered it before.

Remember when you took that bat to that poor boy? How he looked at you, nothing but fear and misunderstanding in his eyes? He didn't do anything to defend himself against you. And you kept going. For every inch of his pain. Why?

Remember when you made Cole bleed when you bit into him? Remember when you almost choked him to death with toilet paper? Remember how you almost killed him, and dragged him out of his high school prom dripping in blood, and your vomit, and toilet water?

So, in the grand scheme of things, her ruining her relationship with Bea was another comparatively tame tape in an already extensive library. 

On judgement day, when that goddamn cat wheeled out the CRT and played back everything in her life she did wrong, it would be marked "TAPE #489 - HOW MAE ONCE AGAIN HURT THE ONES SHE LOVED, AND DID SO THIS TIME WITH SURPRISING EFFICIENCY AND ACTUALLY GOT SUBJECT B (FOR BEATRICE) TO EMOTIONALLY INVEST IN HER BEFORE MAE INEVITABLY RUINED EVERYTHING AND LEFT HER VICTIM A BROKEN HUSK." 

She didn't know if she really believed it would happen that way, but it seemed as likely as anything else, honestly.

Mae heard Gregg finish peeing, and flush. She noticed that the walls and doors here were pretty thin. Like, paper-thin. Like they might as well have all been bead-curtains. She heard him wash his hands, for like five seconds, which kind of weirded her out.

The leaf-like door swung open; there was Gregg.

Could she ask for a better friend? She didn't think so. Gregg was amazing. He was funny, and great, and so happy, and beautiful, and vibrant, despite everything. He had helped her so, so much. He had saved her life so many times, even very literally like two times.

It felt natural to come here, to this apartment, because of him. He had a way of making everything better. She knew this was weird, and wrong, and probably bad, but sometimes she just really needed him, more than anything else. He saw, for no reason at all, the best in her, when she knew there was so little to see.

Gregg rulz okay!!!!

It was kind of weird seeing him without his jacket and in just a white shirt and shorts. He still maintained his same charisma, but it was like a fox in sheep’s clothing, she guessed.

"Do you still want to talk about what happened?" he asked. He was doing some awkward stretch thing with his arms.

"Yeah, I think I do."

"Are you sure, because we can maybe do something that could actually help cheer you up a little bit, rather than just completely focus on your mistakes for the rest of your life?"

He smiled at her, "We could do crimes!!!!"

Mae felt like she was at home again, for the first time in almost a year.

"No, I think," Mae hesitated, "I think I want to tell you this."

"Okay," he said. He sat down.

Mae finished her water, and began. 

"It basically happened just like, naturally,” she said, “We were at one of these college parties, which we started going to a lot more. Well, we started hanging out a lot more, you know, after you guys left."

Gregg piped in, "I think Angus told me that, actually, now that I think about it. Or maybe I sort of assumed it would happen."

Mae was a little perturbed at this, though she didn't really know why, so she just said, "Yeah."

"I'm sorry we left you," Gregg said, "but, you know." He looked down. So earnestly penitent.

"I know." Mae smiled. "It's okay. You and Angus had to do what you had to do. I'm not upset."

She wondered a little bit if she really felt that way, even at all, or if that was one of those things you just think because you love your friends. She know she should have felt that way. That was what mattered, really.

"Thanks," Gregg smiled. 

"Anyway, we were at this dumb kegger party, number like one billion. We both had a bunch of crappy beer to drink, and everyone at that party was hooking up, so it was pretty much just like us in this dinky little living room we had never been in, surrounded by like total strangers making out and fucking in every corner of this weird, big house in the middle of the suburbs of Fort Lucenne. We were listening to really loud music, pretty much the first good music we had heard all night because Bea plugged her phone into their dorky stereo system."

"And you fucked???" Gregg almost shouted.

Mae blushed.

"No. I mean, we kissed."

"How though????" Gregg displayed a unique, hungry ferocity that only he could. Mae was so charmed by this she had almost forgotten entirely that their relationship had ended.

"I was sort of like, 'oh my god, everybody at this party is totally fucking,' and she was like, 'haha are you weirded out by that you're so innocent it's adorable', and I was like, 'shut up!', and she was like, kissing me."

Gregg had a sort of wild, convulsive fit of excitement and emotion while Mae was telling him this. It was weird, and sort of disturbing, but also adorable.

"We made out for like an hour," Mae continued, "but we didn't go much farther. It was the first time–"

"It was your first time kissing????"

"No! But, like, you know I've never really done anything. Like _done_ anything."

"Oh, right."

"Anyway, it was also her first time with a girl."

"Yeah, she never really seemed like the type to me."

"The 'type'?"

"Sorry."

"What's the 'type', Gregg???"

"I'm sorry!!!"

"Haha, nah, I'm just kidding around with you. I never really thought so either. I mean, I kind of started having my suspicions. And I was right, I guess," Mae said, becoming wistful.

Gregg's phone dinged. Mae assumed it was Angus again, but asked anyway, "Is that Angus?"

Gregg didn't say anything, and just typed on his phone.

"What's going on?" Mae asked.

"Pizza problems," Gregg responded. He kept typing. He looked upset, all of a sudden. Mae suspected it wasn't pizza problems, but it was her being there problems. Mae kind of wanted to just grab the phone from him and find out what was happening. Like really badly. But she let it be.

Gregg continued looking at his phone and typing, and half-heartedly said, "Keep going," in Mae's direction.

Mae didn't really feel like it anymore, but she kept going, trying to pretend she didn't know she wasn't causing problems for other, more mature people right then and there,

"After that night, she drove me home, and we kissed more in her car, but nothing else. I left that night so happy and confused and worried and, just, like I was exploding."

"I know the feeling," Gregg said, smirking. He was still looking at his phone. It had dinged again. He started typing again.

"Yeah, I– this is weird, but I thought about you and Angus a lot then. When I didn't quite know what I was doing. Like, I thought about what you guys had with each other, a lot. Um," Mae paused. "Does that make sense?"

Gregg had stopped typing. He hadn't broken eye contact with his phone.

"That's sweet," he murmured.

"The way you guys cared about each other, and like, were there for each other. And, I think I wanted that. Really badly. And so, I started, um, advancing things–”

When Mae realized what she was saying, she knew, all of a sudden, that what she had done to Bea was all her fault. How could she have possibly, ever blamed Bea for being cruel to her?

She saw it now, so clearly it blinded her. She had ruined everything. She hadn't really been thinking about Bea at all, no matter what she told herself. She was only thinking about herself. The only thing she ever did. Goddammit.

How could a worthless sack of shit cat who never earned anything or deserved anything and only hurt everyone around her ever deserve to be loved?

"Mae," Gregg said.

Mae let out a low, weird growl. She didn't remember what she was talking about.

"You trailed off there, bud," Gregg said. His phone was down. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Did you–did this get hard for you? I don't want you to be sad, okay?"

"No, it's fine, Gregg. I'm sorry."

Neither of them talked.

Mae blurted, "I wanted what you had so badly." Sadness had overridden her again. She was crying, without even thinking about it. "What you and Angus had, I mean." She put her head in her hands and started weeping. She felt like such an idiot, worthless, fuckup, loser, crybaby.

"Mae..." She could barely hear Gregg, once again trying to comfort her. God, she didn't deserve him. She felt his hands on her fur, his arms around her, and she knew that he was hugging her again and she didn't know how to feel about that but she didn't want to look up. She didn't want to admit that this was real.

Together, they would be lost in a reverie of weeping and comforting. She knew that this was more than she deserved, but she felt so at home here, all of a sudden. She could get lost in this moment. It was pitiful, but she loved the silence and she loved being held and she loved Gregg, her best friend, who loved her for no reason.

Gregg's phone dinged, and it was over.

"Are you and Angus talking about me," Mae whispered into Gregg's chest. The sound was completely muffled.

"What?" Gregg pulled away from her. He picked up the phone hastily and looked at it. It seemed pressing.

"Are you and Angus talking about me? Do I need to leave?" Mae couldn’t even look at him and say this. She talked into her hands, but she knew he heard him, and she knew it was wrong, and weird, and an all-around clingy and terrible and manipulative thing to say.

"What? No, Mae. We would - he would never. Angus loves you, you know that."

She could feel his gaze on her, but she wouldn't look up.

"Here, you wanna see what we were saying?" Gregg gave Mae his phone.

Mae didn't want to look at it, but she did.

It read,

Angus: "You’re going to be mad at me, but Bea kind of told me some of this already.”

Angus: “I get off at 11. Tell Mae it’s cool that she can sleep here. Also, tell her I love her and she’ll be okay.”

Gregg: "W T F how te fuck am i the las one to kno about this what the whole fuck i’m her best friend omg. also where the fuck is she gonna sleep. do you wanna be on the floor bc it sounds like it".

Angus: "Bea wanted me to keep it a secret. I don't know why, but I think she was embarrassed. Can you imagine her being embarrassed?"

Angus: "I'm really sorry I hid anything from you, bug."

Gregg: "it's not that big a deal im sorry"

Angus: "No, I'm sorry. It was wrong of me."

Six minutes later. Gregg must have sent those ones from the bathroom. Then these must have been the ones at the table.

Angus: "The jackal from earlier with the chili fries problem came back. He was a lot worse this time. He looked lost. We're not sure what to do."

Gregg: "whats wrong"

Angus: "He doesn't know where he is. My manager's trying to talk to him. We're trying to see if he has friends or family or something."

Angus: "I don't think he does."

Gregg: "oh shit. hw bad is he?"

Angus: "I think he might just be coming back from something. He seems lucid. I don't know if that's the right word."

Angus: "He's there, and then he's not there."

Angus: "We might have to call an ambulance or something. He's in the corner right now, shivering. He won't eat anything."

Gregg: "dont call hospital"

Gregg: "just dont"

Gregg: "be careful okay"

Gregg: "are u there?"

Gregg: "let me know if things are ok. send me emoji or smth very quick please.”

Gregg:  “thumgs up if things are ok"

 

Gregg: "angus don't call the hospital.”

And this was the last text, the one that Gregg had just read.

Angus: "Things are okay. He started talking, and he was just having some trouble. He wasn't on anything, it was his condition. We called his sister, and she's gonna come pick him up. We didn't call an ambulance."

"Oh," Mae whispered. She felt so powerfully stupid that her mind was an empty wreck.

Gregg was silent. To Mae, he looked grim. Worse than a bad day. Dead-eyed. Wrung out.

The phone dinged again.

Angus sent a thumbs-up emoji.

 


	3. Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bea remembers.

It was 7:12 P.M. Beatrice Santello was enjoying a cigarette and a hard-shell taco from takeout inside the closed Ol’ Pickaxe.

It had become a daily ritual for her that right after 6 P.M., she would close the store, clean, go get dinner, and enjoy it in this quiet, peaceful, dimly lit store. She had no urge to go back to that now empty apartment she once called home. This was her home.

Since her father disappeared, for good, nothing had really changed. She didn’t have rules now. Didn’t have some sad old man yelling at her when she came in the door, complaining, whining, crying. 

She missed him, but not really.

She bit into the taco. It was warm, and good. Her cigarette was resting dangerously near the wrapper, so she moved it. Suddenly, she felt a buzz in her pocket. She took her phone out. It was Angus. It said,

“Bea, Mae is at our house. Do you want to talk?”

She closed her eyes, held down the power button on her phone, and slid across to turn it off.

She started to weep. 

Deep, shameful, guttural sobs exited her. She threw the taco on the floor. It shattered, spilling its brown ground meat and fake shreds of iceberg lettuce and little unmelted pieces of cheddar cheese all over the floor in a cascade of junk matter. A disaster to clean up later. She threw her phone on the ground. It didn’t really do anything.

She collapsed out of her chair, lay down on the ground, surrounded by foul taco remnants, and cried.

 

***

 

“So then what happened, Mae,” Greggory Lee asked, blankly.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t know you’d–I don’t know.” She was upset. He could see that much.

He tried to salvage things, “Hey, I was sort of joking when I sent Angus that message,” he said, “It’s not that big a deal. Your personal life is your personal life.”

Mae still looked distraught. “No,” she insisted, “I shouldn’t have–I should have talked about it with you. Maybe then things wouldn’t have gotten so weird, and crazy, and bad.”

“Hey, I don’t think I would have really been able to help with that,” he said, smiling at her.

She almost smiled, but was still clearly upset.

“You’re here now, right?” Gregg tried, “You can talk about it with me now, if you want. If you still want to, I mean.”

“I do.”

“I mean, are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

She looked serious. He took this as a good sign, kind of. He just didn’t want to upset her again, and to be perfectly honest, he wasn’t entirely convinced he could hug out all of her grief about this. It was beginning to be sort of exhausting standing like that.

“After that night at the party,” Mae continued, “we started to hang out a lot more. I would come to the store almost every day, like I had kind of already been doing a lot, and we would talk for hours there.”

“‘Talk’,” Gregg joked, waggling his eyebrows.

“No, I mean, really. I mean, there was other stuff, too. But we kind of just talked and talked and talked and I don’t know. I felt so close to her. Even closer than when we were kids.”

“Bea started talking to me about everything,” Mae went on, “like, she opened up to me about every part of her life, all of a sudden. I sort of already had an idea of what she went through. But she never used to let on how she felt about any of it, you know.”

Gregg nodded.

“She started talking about all of her feelings with me, all of a sudden. And I know this is gross, but it felt great. It felt like I was finally really talking to her, for the first time, despite knowing her since like, girl scouts.”

“No,” Gregg interrupted, “that’s not gross, Mae. It’s just, like. Love.”

“Ew.” She was smiling again.

“I know.”

“So,” Mae went on, “things were good like that, for, like, a month. Things were great. Like, better than they ever were, for either of us. It was kind of amazing. We were together pretty much all the time. I was always in the Pickaxe, all day. I didn’t really have anything better to do, I guess.”

“Then, one day, we started talking about our futures, for some reason. Like, what we would do if we weren’t here, or what we would do at all, if we had just tons of money for some reason.”

“And Bea started to get sort of serious. And sad, I think.”

“Out of nowhere, she kind of said, ‘I want you to be with me no matter what’. And I said it back.”

“But at the time, my parents had sort of gotten serious with me about going back to college. And I wasn’t really sure about that, but we started talking about different schools and ones closer to home and stuff. And my mom said something like, ‘it’s not like there’s a whole lot left for you here, sweetie,’ and all I could think about all of a sudden was how I didn’t want to leave Bea, not ever, not for any reason.”

Gregg could see Mae getting upset again. She was starting to crack.

“But,” Mae said, “I guess the truth is, I didn’t really make a decision. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t really want to go back to school, but…”

“Bea wasn’t happy at the store. It was her whole life, especially after her dad disappeared. And it was basically just her and this one squirrel girl named Hester she had just hired still running it. And I tried to help out sometimes, while I was there, but I was really bad at it. Like, really, really awkward, and I always made everything worse. She had to tell me to just stop trying.”

“I didn’t know if I wanted her to be stuck there. Or maybe, I just didn’t want to be stuck there. I was so…selfish.”

“You have to know that–that I still loved her. And that I still do. But, when it comes down to it, I had no…”

“Mae?” Gregg said. She had trailed off completely. She didn’t seem to have any idea what to say next. She looked on the verge of another complete breakdown.

“Mae,” he tried again.

Her gaze was completely stuck to the table. There was no getting through to her.

“Mae,” he said, “it’s not your fault. You know that, right?”

Still nothing. “These things happen,” Gregg went on, “it’s what happens between people in relationships all the time. Not everything always works out perfectly. You know? You can’t blame yourself.”

Mae murmured back, “You don’t even know what happened.”

“So tell me,” he suggested.

Mae tried to clear her throat. Some hair caught in it.

“Oh, dude, hey,” Gregg worried.

More hacking noises. It was quite excessive.

“Fuck, should I get a trash thing?” Gregg looked around. Did they even have a trashbin?

Mae drew out a final cough, and looked back up. “It was nothing.”

“Okay, good. Jeez. Uh, keep going, with your story, I guess.”

“One night,” Mae continued, “we were at her place, and I mentioned that my mom had gotten a week off of the church and was going to take me to look at colleges again.”

“She didn’t even say anything, all of a sudden. She just gave me this look. She was furious.”

“I tried to tell her that this was only me thinking about it, but she just shut down. She wouldn’t even listen to me, or talk to me about it.”

“She started telling me how–“

Gregg could see Mae almost start crying again. She held it in.

“How everything I said to her had been fake, and–“

Mae looked as if she was about to shatter.

“How I’m not–“

“How she never should have believed a word I said. How I shouldn’t have told her that I would stay with her if I was just going to leave again.”

“How I never should have come back here in the first place. How I had just made her believe in something for a second, and that–“

Mae couldn’t get it out.

“That I was taking everything away from her. That she could never, never trust me again. And then she made me leave.”

“I kept trying to tell her it didn’t mean anything, and that we could work out something, and that I hadn’t really made my decision to leave, or anything, and it was just looking. But she wouldn’t hear me. It was like she saw right through everything I was saying. Like she had seen this–this horrible truth about me at my core, that I would leave her, and that even I didn’t know it, but I really did know it, deep down, and she had to tell me that.”

Gregg was worried. Mae wasn’t even crying. He said, “Mae,” softly, carefully.

There was silence.

“Mae,” Gregg whispered through the silence, “You know that’s not true. She was just upset.”

Mae didn’t look like she was hearing him.

“When did this happen?” he asked.

“Like, two weeks ago,” she cursed.

“You know, that’s not that much time. You could still talk again. Still fix things,” he offered.

“I’m supposed to leave for this college trip in three days. My mom already bought the plane tickets. It cost her so much.  She has it all planned out,” Mae seemed outside of herself, looking down, listing off these things like statistics.

“Come on,” he tried, “You know you could still talk to her again. You know how she just gets angry sometimes, and it goes away. None of this is permanent.”

“She won’t listen to me, Gregg,” she spat. “It’s over. You don’t get it.”

Gregg didn’t know whether to keep pushing, but he did, “Have you even tried to talk to her since then?”

“No,” she responded, immediately, then, “Yes.”

“What happened?”

“I saw her in town. I was just trying to look at her, from far away, to see how she was doing. She noticed me. Instantly, all she did was–was just _look at me_ , and I could tell how much she hated me. How much she despised me.”

“Mae–“

“It won’t get better, Gregg. I’m going to leave. My mom was right. There’s nothing left for me in Possum Springs. Maybe there’s nothing for me at college, either, but I have no choice left but to try.”

Mae had turned colder than Gregg had ever seen her.

He couldn’t tell if there was rage behind her words, or just total apathy. This was a new bottom for her–he was beginning to understand how helpless she looked when he had first opened the door an hour ago.

There was a silence too long to forgive.

“Mae,” Gregg said, “you’ll get through this, okay?”

It was like talking to a wall.

“I know this is hard for you, and it sucks. But you can get through this. Things will get better, alright?”

He searched her eyes for any kind of recognition. She didn’t let on to any admission, if there was one. The best he could hope for was that she’d hear him later on, on her own.

“Do you maybe want to just lie down?”

Mae looked up at him. Now, all of a sudden, there were tears in her eyes. Her facade had cracked, just a bit. She looked like a cat about to be run over by a car.

“Let’s get you to bed, alright?” he offered, and stood up.

Without saying anything, she slowly obliged. She stood up, and Gregg pushed her over to their bed, and she slumped down into it, and broke down in deep, whimpering sobs.

He sat down next to her and patted her, awkwardly, as she did this. He tried to discard some of the crumbs and various wrinkles out of the bed, idly.

After a period of this, he ventured, “Hey.”

No response. More sobs.

“This is kind of a weird question, but how did you get here?”

She talked into the pillow, “I took the bus.”

“Oh. Okay.”

She had stopped sobbing, but was still audibly crying.

“Did you, um, get a two-way ticket?” he asked.

She shook her head into the pillow.

“Okay. That’s okay.”

Gregg stood up from the bed. He figured it best to leave Mae alone for a minute, to the best of his ability. There was really no way to put a wall between them, but he walked back over to the kitchen table and looked at his phone.

He texted Angus, “thank u. u did the right thing. i’m really glad that worked out.”

Then, “mae is gonna be sleeping here tonight definitely. not rlly sure how that’s gonna work out honestly. she looks about ready to pass out tho.”

Then, “u might have to drive her home tmrw if yr up to it. sorry”.

One more. “<3 u capn”.

He closed his eyes for a second. His phone dinged.

Angus said, “Of course. Be home soon. Love you bug <3”.

 


	4. Part 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angus helps.

Part Four

Angus came home after a long day, a box of bad pizza tucked under his arm, and his key in his other hand. He fumbled in the dark at the door. It was almost one in the morning.

Once he actually found the keyhole in the dark, he realized that the door hadn’t even been locked in the first place. Great. He grabbed the knob, and slid the door open.

All the lights in the apartment were left on. He looked around.

This place was still a mess. He wished Gregg would step up and start cleaning eventually. He was sort of getting tired of just living like this, but he was fairly sure if he held out he could actually get him to do his share. Or he hoped, at least. You can never really know, Angus guessed.

On the table was an empty box of tissues, an empty glass, and next to it a pile of wet, dirty tissues that hadn’t been cleaned up at all. He walked over to the kitchen and deposited his pizza in the fridge.

On the bed were Gregg and Mae–Mae, fully clothed, curled up into a fetal ball on the right side, Gregg slumped down next to her, his arms spread out like an eagle, facing downward.

Angus thought about this. Something like–

Something like jealousy–

That wasn’t right. He knew Gregg wasn’t and wouldn’t be interested in her. Knew very, very well. Still, that pang was there. It shouldn’t have been. He felt bad about it.

He also kind of felt bad about not having anywhere to sleep. Tired, he opened the fridge, and felt stupid as he pulled the pizza back out, and took a piece off and put it on a plate. He meticulously took all the trash off the kitchen table, cleaned it, washed and dried a plate, and ate his dinner.

He thought about Mae, doing this, and thought back to Beatrice’s texts.

It sort of seemed to him that the relationship was doomed from the start, not to be grim or nasty about his friends, or anything. It was one of those things that pushed forward on heat and passion and without direction or control – one of those strange beasts of couplings and hookups made entirely of fire. It was begging to be put out, by pretty much anything. 

The disagreement that ended it was Mae deciding she wanted to leave for college, or so he heard from Bea, but Angus suspected it could have been anything, really. Some petty fight. Bad sex. A mislaid comment.

He thought, sort of, that they were good for each other, but not like that. In any relationship, he felt, there needed to be some thought or common understanding or the whole thing would come crashing down.

When he looked at Gregg, adorably spread out on the bed, he felt the passing of time. He felt the same way he had always felt about him, but brand new.

But there was also that –

Jealousy, which he hated.

Or maybe, it was a good thing?

An undue symptom of true love – a possessing mistake?

To be fair to himself, it could also just be anger of not having a place to sleep. He did work all day.

He finished his pizza. It was delicious, though cold to the bone. The pizza bone. He kind of wished he had the energy to cook it, but sort of enjoyed the relief from that, for once, just for himself.

Calmly, he took his glasses off, turned off the lights, and went over to Gregg. He nudged him slightly. Gregg woke, and looked up at him. Somehow, his bright green eyes always managed to pierce the dark, like he was a Looney Tunes character, but also really hot. He felt weird about that thought.

He climbed into bed, Gregg silently locking into place behind him, subconsciously assuming a light spoon. He had forgotten to take off his work clothes. He didn’t want to move. He felt at home.

 

***

 

When Angus had waken up, Gregg had disappeared from behind him. He had work. Also not there was Mae.

He pulled himself up, steadily, and rested his back on the baseboard of the bed. He looked around. Mae was across from him, silent, sitting at the table, a cold piece of pizza in hand.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hey,” he mumbled back.

He fumbled around the bed for his phone, before realizing it had never left his pocket, as he was still fully dressed. He pulled it out. 8:53 A.M.

“You see Gregg leave?” he asked.

“Yeah. He woke me up. Um, sorry about–“

“It’s fine,” he growled.

Mae looked down. He didn’t really have time for whatever that whole conversation might have been, probably a bizarre long-winded apology for nothing.

He kind of felt bad, though, Mae looking the way she did. He couldn’t really see very well without his glasses, but he could make out that she was in the same clothes, and clearly very distraught. Well. That he didn’t need glasses for.

“Do your parents know where you are?” He asked her. He put a steady gaze on her.

“Yeah, um, Gregg made me text them last night.”

He exhaled. “You know, your parents really care about you, and you shouldn’t just–“

“I know.” Mae interrupted. He got the feeling she had heard this before.

“All I’m saying is, you should try and be more considerate of them, the next time this happens, okay?”

“Yeah, I – I guess. The next time.”

“Sorry. Not saying there would be a next time, just. Saying.”

She looked down again. Ugh.

“Mae, hey,” he pleaded.

She looked up at him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You and Bea… that’s tough. I can’t imagine. I really can’t. I’m really sorry.”

She was sort of tearing up, it looked like. She nodded, though. He thought he could sort of see her smiling.

“Hey,” he said, “It’ll be alright.” He meant it.

Mae let out a nervous laugh, half-crying. “Yeah, I know. I just – I’m just – yeah. Hahaha.”

She was smiling, at least. She’d get through this.

“Hey,” he said, “Not to be rude, but do you mind getting me my glasses? I don’t really know where they are. I kind of left them somewhere when I was getting home last night.”

“Oh–“ Mae sniffled, “Yeah, they’re um, right here.” She grabbed them, resting right in front of her on the table. Angus thought, for a second, that this was the oldest thing he had ever done. He was like a sickly, impotent old man.

She walked over to him, awkwardly, and handed them over. He took them, and put them on. That was better.

“Thanks, Mae.” 

She was still kind of manicly smiling through her sadness. It was quite a show.

“I have to change,” he said.

“Oh, I’ll, uh –“

“Yeah, you can just turn around.” Angus lumbered out of bed, feeling an ache of years, a primordial ache, the burden of Atlas; or maybe he was just really tired. He walked over to a stack in the corner of his side of the room where he had deigned to separate his “clean” clothes, and carefully picked out something alright. A t-shirt, a green sweater, jeans. He wasn’t working today so there was no need for his typical cardigan and tie ensemble.

At this point, he noticed Mae nervously facing the other way as this happened. She also remained, oddly, extremely close, not moving from where she had handed him his glasses. He found this oddly cute, if bewildering.

“You know,” he offered her, about to pull off his boxers, “If you wanted, you could like, move a little farther away, or –“

“Oh!!!” she yelped. She nervously puttered forward, then puttered to the side, then puttered to the bathroom, her hand over her eyes, and shut the door behind her.

He laughed. Relaxed, he finished changing. Pulling the sweater on, he put his glasses back on. The world slid comfortably back into view. “Mae, you can come out now.”

The door creaked open. “Haha,” Mae peeped, “that was weird. Like, a movie thing, that shouldn’t have ever happened in real life.”

“Yeah, a little bit. Mostly it was just you being deliriously awkward because you need to sleep, though.”

“So,” she asked, changing the subject, “what do you wanna do now???”

“Now? Do you want breakfast?” His gaze turned to the kitchen. Its contents disappointed him, every day. He had only himself to blame. He guessed he could probably make her eggs or something, and that would be fine. An omelette. Was their milk good? Did they still have it? Gregg sometimes chugged it. Not cool.

“Oh, um, I already had that cold pizza. Like pretty nearly all of it.” Mae, normally a mess of shame, seemed to feel completely comfortable saying this.

“Yeah, I guess you’d be full then,” he sighed.

“I’m not though!!!”

“Alright. I was gonna just make scrambled eggs. You want some?”

“Yes please!!!”

For the first time in a very, very long time, Angus thought about having children.

Too far away.

He was happy to placate Mae with scrambled eggs for the time being though. He pulled out their carton; five. He wondered how these uneven egg arrangements even happened.

He then remembered an incident where he had told Gregg it might be funny to see an egg go out of the window since they had no idea how far up they were and, yeah, that was where it went.

Four, two at a time. He grabbed a frying pan, miraculously clean, but wiped it for good measure. He put it over a high heat. Carefully, he scooped a heaping of butter into the center, waited for it to melt, and gently swirled it back and forth until it covered the pan; then, he found a metal bowl, wiped it, cracked the eggs on the counter, then quickly put them in the bowl. He whisked, and eyed the pan - needed more butter, so he added more, swirled it, whisked, until the eggs had a perfect consistency. No milk, not ever – half of the mixture went into the pan at just the right moment.

He caught Mae staring. He couldn’t tell if she was mesmerized or going off into the distance again. “Hey,” he said, pulling himself out from the deep thought he put into the minutiae of cooking, “how are you doing, Mae?”

“Uhhh,”

He searched for a fork.

“Well, I mean,”

Got it - a clean one, from the little cup thing by the sink. Nice. This was one of the good forks too. The big ones.

“Bea hates me,”

He whisked the egg mixture, still liquid-y but beginning to form, around the pan with the fork.

“And, like, for pretty good reason,”

He waited a minute, letting the new formation sit.

“Because I’m a colossal failure who will abandon every one I ever come in contact with,”

He began to carefully, with the fork, scrape under the edges to check its doneness. Looking good so far. He loved this burner.

“And she never should have trusted me in the first place,”

He continued whisking away at the mixture with his fork. It was beginning to smell delicious, and look good. He looked around for a spatula.

“And, she meant the world to me, and I don’t really know that I can live without her,”

He found it.

“And I know that’s a fucked up thing to say, and it’s fucked up to like blame her for me wanting to die, when everything about our relationship ending was my fault, but it’s how I feel.”

He got a plate, and carefully scraped from the edges of the pan all the scrambled eggs onto the plate, tilting the pan itself slightly onto the plate as he did this, just enough to guide it along. Some awkward remnants remained, but that was okay. He would be putting in a new mixture in a second. He added a liberal amount of pepper, then salt, and grabbed a fork and butter knife and put it down in front of Mae, and said,

“Well, you know none of that is true, first of all.”

Mae looked terrified, confused, and offended, and hungry.

He continued, “It’s normal for you to feel bad about the break up and break ups are hard, I know, but what you should be feeling bad about is the fact that you didn’t talk to her about college and your plans in the first place. That’s what she was angry about–the things you were keeping from her, not even that you were actually going away. She had to guess your motivations constantly, just like you were guessing hers constantly.”

“That sort of thing works for a cutesy game of flirting for a while, but if you want–wanted– to have a future with Bea, you would need to be honest about your feelings, not just some of the time, but all of the time, even when they might hurt her. Even when you knew it would hurt her.”

“You know,” Angus lowered his voice, “You know, and I know, how deeply she feels about you. And you know that, well, there’s probably a chance of this re-starting, to be honest, the way you two are. I know you’d probably want that, despite what you just said about how you never deserve love, which is obviously bullshit.”

Mae’s pupils expanded. She was silent.

“I love you,” he said, “Gregg loves you. Your parents love you, and they’re worried to death about where you actually might be right now.”

“Making things right with Bea,” he began to suppose, “might be important for you, and working out a plan for what you want to do is actually a more important part of that than whatever you think she, or your parents, want.”

“But you know how important you are to her, no matter where you are. If you were 25,000 miles away for the next 20 years, you’d still be important to her. If you went to the moon and never came back, you’d still be a part of her life, and I bet you guys would still find a way to make things work, setting up some kind of psychic relay system, or inventing Moon-Skype.”

“But you need to talk to her, no matter what you decide to do.”

He pointed to the eggs. “Eat,” he insisted, “while they’re hot.”

“That’s not,” she started, in a whisper-y monotone, “You can’t just–say all that, Angus. Just cos you’re smart. That’s–that’s fucked up.”

“Sorry,” he said. He wasn’t. He turned around and got back to cooking the rest of the eggs for himself. 

He didn’t have to look at her to tell that some part of what he said had gotten through to her, just a little bit, and that maybe she was even smiling.

He heard her wolfing down the scrambled eggs. He smiled, and made eggs.

 

***

 

Mae, after a bit of explaining and talking about it, eventually gave way to Angus driving her home. It would be a pretty excessive amount of gas money, he thought, but he didn’t know if he could in good conscience give her a bus ticket. Leaving her alone for that long seemed wrong. Leaving her alone to go to the bathroom seemed wrong.

Angus asked her whether she wanted to see anything in Bright Harbor, but she refused. He had a feeling she wouldn’t get much out  of it right now, and was sort of antsy anyway to get going. They left at around 11, without much to do between the two of them. Angus tried to make a joke that she could see all the landmarks and culture they wanted during the next two hours as they tried to pull out of the driveway, and Mae responded, simply, with,

“That’s a dad joke, Angus,” and a bleak, empty stare pointed away from him, into the window.

And so their journey begun.

 

They really were stuck in Bright Harbor for about 50 minutes of pure congestion, working their way through insane traffic, construction, clogs, and tired, confused, navigation, lacking direction or effort.

But once they got their way to the tunnel, it was smooth, unfiltered sailing, driven by energy and momentum and the power of passing civilizations and towns and architecture and chains and life, all around them, blinking by, surrounded by others doing the same. The transition made Angus think about Gregg, a little bit, which he knew was corny.

Mae didn’t really talk during this trip, besides for utilitarian things, “Can I have the window down now?” “How do I put the seat back?” “Can you afford the A/C on right now, it’s really hot?” 

“Does the A/C actually use energy or gas or anything? I always assumed, but…” To that line of questioning, he said he was sure it didn’t, but knew it did. That was kind of a win for her, right? Then again, it might come up later and make her seem foolish. Five minutes later, he admitted that it did use gas by saying he mistakenly remembered it wrong, but not that much, so she wouldn’t worry about it. Overall, she didn’t seem to be that affected by this information, and Angus began to feel foolish for reading this much into it.

That was sort of the nervousness he carried with him throughout the trip. There was the road, the terrifying, magnificent road, but more scary were whatever Mae was thinking about the things he said. Or maybe she wasn’t thinking about those things, or Bea, at all. 

Maybe inside her mind right now was really the total silence she exhibited right now.

The more he thought about it, that was probably the scariest possible thing to be happening. Judging by the fact that she wasn’t crying, he decided that the more likely answer was that she was just still processing everything, and probably pretty well.

He was happy with that, kind of.

At a certain point, about three hours in, Angus pulled off of the road and into a gas station, one of the many along this highway, strange displacements decided not by the sum of history, but of a certain number of miles along a certain highway remodeled in the 1950s. One clerk guarding an armada of gasoline, candy, drinks, and tabloids all by himself, arbiting the trade in this outpost like a warlord of his turf, but without the pride, dignity, wages, or job security of such a lord.

This one was a SnackFalcon, which he thought might be a cool coincidence if he didn’t pass 50 SnackFalcons every single day of his life, and 5,000 today, already.

As he pulled in, he asked Mae, “You want any food, Mae?”

“Oh, yeah. Can I get…”

“Should I just get a bunch of things and you can eat them until you’re basically sick?”

She nodded. He felt terrible about this, but also right.

He went in to pay for the gas, and talked to a tired old crone of a hawk who unhappily took his money for the gas, then waited patiently, as Angus gathered his menagerie of junk food to appease Mae, surely waiting patiently in the car.

Two bags of gummy sharks. And gummy rings. The apple or the peach ones?

Both.

Chips, first potato. Another potato one, because those things are really small.

At this point, the cashier hawk began eying him skeptically.

He considered these hard sweet candies that you had to like either put in your mouth for a while or just bite into raw like some kind of wild animal.

No.

He felt bad about this. It didn’t quite show the level of care he normally put into something he might cook. But, such was life, such was life, such was life. 

And honestly, Mae would appreciate it more. What would she really appreciate him making for her, anyway? Donuts? Basically, nothing that he could actually easily make. Unless he had a deep fryer or something.

He picked out some mini ultra-processed cookies. It was getting hard to hold in his arm.

He looked at the cashier. “Do you mind if I put these over there?”

“Sure,” he scoffed.

He stacked the snacks on the counter.

A pack of gum.

Chocolate would be a whole adventure. Especially with girls. He knew it was a thing. Not to say a thing, but it was a thing.

Three of the ones with caramel, two of the ones with that really smooth-tasting nougat. Butterscotches? Those were in little squares and hardly worth it. Five of them. Then, two of the actually good really long peanut bars. Peanut chews. Can’t believe this brand-washed place had these. They were actually good. He got two more.

He stacked the chocolates on to the pile in front of the cashier, who was now visibly nervous.

Beverages. One Lime Fiascola, one water. That should probably do it.

The cost, he realized, would be obscene, but the cost of the whole journey so far had been, honestly. It was worth it. He thought.

He said, “That’s all,” unconvincingly, and the cashier began scanning the barcodes.

The old hawk looked down. He cleared his throat.

Uh-oh.

“You know,” the cashier started, certainly but uncertainly.

“There’s places–there’s people you can talk to. If you–“

“Oh, this is not–“ Angus tried to crack a grin at this.

“I mean, whatever this is, it’s okay. You can always… there’s always help out there.”

“Hey, look, I appreciate–“

“I don’t know your situation,” the cashier got louder, “Maybe you don’t have people you can talk to. It happens.”

“Listen, I really don’t–“

“You can get help. No matter what,” he kept ringing the items, “there’s clinics out there. You don’t have to pay at the door. There’s pay scales.” The cashier was looking right at him, not hearing a word he said.

“It’s for a friend! She needs it! She’s in the car!”

Angus hated himself for shouting almost immediately.

“Oh. Haha.”

The cashier was finished ringing the pile of snacks up. “That’s forty-two dollars.”

“Wow,” Angus said.

“Yeah,” he said.

Angus paid up, and waited as the cashier sorted his things out in plastic bags. He hauled them all in one trip to the car. He could see Mae’s eyes light up from through the car window as he pushed open the glass door. It warmed his heart.

 

***

At 8:42 P.M., they pulled into Possum Springs, and the minutes got longer.

At 8:59 P.M., Angus pulled in front of Mae’s house.

She was frozen in the shotgun seat.

“Come on,” he tried.

“What had I been talking you up to for the past twelve million hours?” he pleaded.

“I know. I just… need a second,” Mae pressed. She seemed stern. Certain. Convinced. This was a good thing, he thought.

“It’s just…” Mae trailed off.

Angus decided to just wait. If it came to her, it came to her.

When I get back to that house, my parents are going to… they’re not going to be…”

He waited an uncomfortable amount of time for Mae to find her thought. “Mae, what?” he finally said.

“The world kind of…” Mae was going on.

“People kind of take it easy on me. Because they know me.” She continued.

“And they know I’m a fuck-up.”

“But it’s not fair.”

Angus interrupted, “Hey, no–“

“No, just, listen,” Mae was sterner than ever. Sterner than some goddamn hard tack, was what she was. 

“I want to be… maybe if I was held up to the same standard as everyone else, maybe I would be… better. Maybe I could actually do it. I don’t know. I feel like, maybe, if this thing, this life I’m living right now, absolutely wasn’t available to me, then I would just make it work somehow, like everything would snap together, in an act of survival, and I could finally do all these things that I’ve been waiting my whole life to just know how to do, when I should have been trying to learn how to do them, like everyone else was doing.”

“That’s not true,” Angus insisted.

“But, how would I know? How would anyone know how I would have turned out, if I had been–“

Angus growled, “Like me?”

Mae stopped.

Shame washed over her.

“No, it’s okay,” he tried. He lowered his voice as much as possible.

“It– it isn’t. I’m sorry,” she had started to tear up again.

“Hey. Look at me,” he tried. This was sort of what he did with Gregg, when he was really down, which was weird, but as long as it worked–

“I’m me,” Angus went on, “because I’m me.”

“I’m not me because my dad beat me, or my mom beat me, or I was in that cupboard for however long however many times.”

“I like cooking because I like cooking.”

“You’re Mae Borowski,” he went on, “You’d still be Mae Borowski if you were an orphan. You’d still be Mae Borowski if you weren’t named Mae Borowski. You’d still be Mae Borowski if you were a dog, or a mouse, or a rat, or an old dang farmer, or were born in the bottom of a well and never saw light until you were nineteen.”

“If you were homeless right now, all of a sudden, if everything dropped out from underneath you, nothing would change. Not even if you went back in time and dropped out the floor when you were six, or four, or two. Stop thinking that.”

“Every part of you is–“

He fumbled.

“It’s you. You’re still you. And everyone you know, who really loves you, doesn’t love you for some edge of you, or some face of you, like I know you think they do.”

Mae was drenched in tears, sobbing silently.

“They love you because you’re the Mae Borowski that is every bit as fucked up and terrible as you think you are.”

Angus realized that this tact may have not been ideal far too late in the game.

“Uh, Mae,” he tried.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“No, I–It’s good,” she spoke.

“None of that,” she said, “made, like, any sense, though. At all. Like…”

“Sure it did.”

She laughed.

“I mean,” she was smiling, “there’s pretty much entire sciences–“

“Shut up,” Angus half-joked.

She did.

He looked over. Standing in the open doorway were Candy and Stan. Still the same. Older. Better? Cooler.

They looked broken up, and it was breaking them up just to stand there and wait. He thought they were insane for doing that. He wouldn’t have done that at all. He would have run to his car. Thrown rocks through the window. Smashed his fist through the window.

“Mae, I don’t want to rush you, but your parents are there.”

She looked over at them. Then back to Angus. Her stare had gone wild, her pupils distended. She was either really lost or really found. He thought it might be the latter, for once.

He made his boldest suggestion of the day,

“Mae, it’s time for you to go home.”

Mae laughed, again, and smiled, looking down.

She looked back at Angus.

“Thank you, Angus. For everything.”

“Sure.”

“If you wait, for just a minute,” she said, “I can pay you back, for the gas, and everything, that I ate–“

“Pay me back by going to your parents right now,” he said.

“Okay,” she said, clearly skeptical of this but buying into it for the sake of the end of a long trip.

She hugged him, awkwardly, yet not awkwardly at all, over the car seat.

“Bye,” she said. She opened the car door, and went to her parents.

Angus could see her, running, until she was a little blip of a cat, in the distance. A silhouette hugging her two bigger silhouettes in the light of the bright, empty house. He watched them hug. For a long time.

Eventually, they guided her inside, disappearing out of sight of the doorway.

Angus had started to cry.

Unexpectedly, he saw Stan reappear in the doorway.

Stan waved to the car, and said something. Angus couldn’t hear.

Stan started walking towards the car.

Angus hit the gas on the car, and sped off into the road, going forty over the limit. He was gone.


	5. Epilogue

“Mae.”

“I’m sorry. I really am. I wasn’t fair to you, and I know it.”

“After I said what I said, I didn’t know how to take it back, and how to get you back.”

“It was wrong of me.”

“I want you to be happy. I really do. I shouldn’t have said those things. Been so controlling. Everything I did started to be wrong.”

“I want to be honest with you, so”

“Angus told me some things about you going over to see them in Bright Harbor.”

“Mae, I never want you to feel like that again.”

“It doesn’t matter whether we ever date again. I want to talk to you. I don’t want you in that state, not ever.”

“I’m so sorry, Mayday.”

Mae typed back,

“I love you, Beatrice.”

“I’m coming to see you at the Pickaxe right now.”

She ran out the door.


End file.
